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>Plenty of people pay for the ... It is true that many pay for digital subscriptions but I did not interpret the "will people pay for it?" as just a non-zero n

by jasode 11y ago

>Plenty of people pay for the ... It is true that many pay for digital subscriptions but I did not interpret the "will people pay for it?" as just a non-zero number of subscribers. Instead, "will people pay for it?" is often interpreted as shorthand for "would enough people pay enough money to make it economically viable?" (E.g. good salaries for journalists, strong profits for the publisher, etc.) Yes, those websites you mentioned are attracting paying subscribers to avoid paywalls but as far as I can tell, nobody is making significant profits from it. For example, NYT digital subscriptions are growing -- and ad revenue from online is growing -- but the profits (if any) are not replacing the lost profits from traditional print ads. For online subscriptions, many publishers are losing money or barely breaking even. No newspaper including NYT has solved the economic puzzle of digital subscriptions bringing the type of money that 1990s paper classifieds + ads brought. So far, the answer to "will people pay for it?" appears to be "no". From what I can tell, the kind of publishing that works very well on subscriptions is industry-specific for a specialized audience. For example, the NationalJournal (costs $7000 to $25000) for following blow-by-blow legislation in Washington DC or Gartner Group (~$20k/yr) for business analysis news. On the other hand, the mass audience journalism like NYT and USAToday is replicated on too many other free sources. As a result, mainstream publishing will always depend more on heavy-handed advertising rather than subscriptions for the majority of revenue.

devishard 11y ago
> No newspaper including NYT has solved the economic puzzle of digital subscriptions bringing the type of money that 1990s paper classifieds + ads brought. Now we're really getting to the heart of it: in an economic environment where growth is valued above all else, including actual value, publishers can't accept that they might have to make less money. Honestly, though, I am highly skeptical that for-profit businesses controlling our media is even a good thing. Look at NPR, which is supported entirely by donations and grants: they don't make much money, and incidentally they do some of the best reporting I've come across. Ultimately, I think the NYT and its ilk aren't "failing" at subscription models, they're failing because they can't compete with a myriad of more local news sources. It's hard to maintain a business when you have to send reporters to Cairo to report on Arab spring or to Tokyo to report on the Fukushima reactors, and local readers can get eyewitness reports from Redditors and Twitterers. It doesn't help that major news sources are increasingly untrustworthy and sensationalized. Ads are allowing them to delay the inevitable, but I think the end result will be decentralization. There's no reason for me to get my news about the Arab spring from the NYT when Al Jazeera has reporters who have been on the ground there for decades and have far more context; there's no reason for me to get my news about Fukushima from the NYT when I can read the English version of the Japan Times. News Aggregators make this easier. And incidentally, there are plenty of small news sources operating on subscription, pay-per-article, PWYW, donation, or other business models.
Bartweiss 11y ago
> On the other hand, the mass audience journalism like NYT and USAToday is replicated on too many other free sources. This is huge. For a story that anyone can cover ("Cat Stuck in Tree!"), there's mass-market competition where a hundred players can run their own versions of the same story. If one of those players is willing to work for free (or Reddit karma, or 'exposure', or whatever else), then the value of that information drops to ~$0. Mass market journals used to get by on marginal costs, but those are ~0 too now. What they have left to offer is writing quality and accuracy, but its increasingly looking like those aren't worth what they cost. And the quality dilution of high-end journalism has made the problem worse, by driving journalists into ever-more-direct competition with the free sources they can't possibly outprice.

by jasode 11y ago

devishard 11y ago

> No newspaper including NYT has solved the economic puzzle of digital subscriptions bringing the type of money that 1990s paper classifieds + ads brought. Now we're really getting to the heart of it: in an economic environment where growth is valued above all else, including actual value, publishers can't accept that they might have to make less money. Honestly, though, I am highly skeptical that for-profit businesses controlling our media is even a good thing. Look at NPR, which is supported entirely by donations and grants: they don't make much money, and incidentally they do some of the best reporting I've come across. Ultimately, I think the NYT and its ilk aren't "failing" at subscription models, they're failing because they can't compete with a myriad of more local news sources. It's hard to maintain a business when you have to send reporters to Cairo to report on Arab spring or to Tokyo to report on the Fukushima reactors, and local readers can get eyewitness reports from Redditors and Twitterers. It doesn't help that major news sources are increasingly untrustworthy and sensationalized. Ads are allowing them to delay the inevitable, but I think the end result will be decentralization. There's no reason for me to get my news about the Arab spring from the NYT when Al Jazeera has reporters who have been on the ground there for decades and have far more context; there's no reason for me to get my news about Fukushima from the NYT when I can read the English version of the Japan Times. News Aggregators make this easier. And incidentally, there are plenty of small news sources operating on subscription, pay-per-article, PWYW, donation, or other business models.

Bartweiss 11y ago

> On the other hand, the mass audience journalism like NYT and USAToday is replicated on too many other free sources. This is huge. For a story that anyone can cover ("Cat Stuck in Tree!"), there's mass-market competition where a hundred players can run their own versions of the same story. If one of those players is willing to work for free (or Reddit karma, or 'exposure', or whatever else), then the value of that information drops to ~$0. Mass market journals used to get by on marginal costs, but those are ~0 too now. What they have left to offer is writing quality and accuracy, but its increasingly looking like those aren't worth what they cost. And the quality dilution of high-end journalism has made the problem worse, by driving journalists into ever-more-direct competition with the free sources they can't possibly outprice.